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Poll debacle: SAD core committee meeting today
The SAD’s tally in the assembly polls dipped from 15 seats in 2017 to three in elections held on February 20. The total votes polled to the party also nosedived by 32%
Chandigarh : After its worst-ever electoral debacle in the Punjab Assembly elections on March 10, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) leaders will meet for the first time on Monday to analyse the reasons behind the loss and the way forward.
Party president Sukhbir Singh Badal, who also lost from the Jalalabad seat, might face tough questions from the senior party leaders.
Five-time Punjab chief minister and party patriarch Parkash Singh Badal will also attend the meeting.
“It’s tsunami like situation when all the parties (except the AAP) have been wiped out in Punjab. This is a repeat of the 1977 movement, when the Janata Party won Lok Sabha elections and Congress lost all seats, but situation imploded in three years,” said Naresh Gujral, party’s Rajya Sabha member. “There’s no denying the fact that we have to rise from ashes and reinvent ourselves,” he added.
In Jalandhar, SAD leader and former Lok Sabha member Prem Singh Chandumajra said the party will introspect reasons behind defeat. Asked whether SAD chief president Sukhbir Singh Badal should quit, he said that they will discuss it on the party platform. On CM-designate Bhagwant Singh Mann, Chandumajra said he should have visited the Golden Temple with humbleness instead of doing a show of strength of AAP workers from entire Punjab.
The SAD’s performance in the assembly polls dipped from 15 seats in 2017 to three in the polls held on February 20. The total votes polled to the party also nosedived by 32%.
It got 25.4% votes in 2017 against 18.5% in the recent polls, posing the crisis of existence to the party. The party won one seat each in Malwa, Doaba and Majha belts and it alliance partner Bahujam Samaj Party (BSP), which contested on 20 seats, could win only one seat in Doaba. SAD contested on 97 seats out of total 117-member state legislative assembly.
